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Please note: Although this is the ‘final’ formal post of the LOCAH JISC project, it will not be the last post. Our project is due to complete at the end of July, and we still have plenty to do, so there’ll more blog posts to come.

We consider the Archives Hub EAD to RDF XSLT stylesheet to be a key product of the Locah project. The stylesheet encapsulates both the Locah developed Linked Data model and provides a simple standards-based means to transform archival data to Linked Data RDF/XML. The stylesheet can straightforwardly be re-used and re-purposed by anyone wishing to transform archival data in EAD form to Linked Data ready RDF/XML.

The stylesheet is the primary source from which we were able to develop data.archiveshub.ac.uk, our main access point to the Archives Hub Linked Data. Data.archiveshub.ac.uk provides access to both human and machine-readable views of our Linked Data, as well as access to our SPARQL endpoint for querying the Hub data and a bulk download of the entire Locah Archives Hub Linked Dataset.

The stylesheet also provided the means necessary to supply data for our first ‘Timemap’ visualisation prototype. This visualisation currently allows researchers to access the Hub data by a small range of pre-selected subjects: travel and exploration, science and politics. Having selected a subject, the researcher can then drag a time slider to view the spread of a range of archive sources through time. If a researcher then selects an archive she/he is interested in on the timeline, a pin appears on the map below showing the location of the archive, and an call out box appears providing some simple information such as the title, size and dates of the archive. We hope to include data from other Linked Data sources, such as Wikipedia in these information boxes.

This visualisation of the Archives Hub data and links to other data sets provides an intuitive view to the user that would be very difficult to provide by means other than exploiting the potential of Linked Data.

Please note these visualisations are currently still work in progress:

Short description: A JISC-funded project working to make data from Copac and the Archives Hub available as Linked Data.

Longer description: The Archives Hub and Copac national services provide a wealth of rich inter- disciplinary information that we will expose as Linked Data. We will be working with partners who are leaders in their fields: OCLC, Talis and Eduserv. We will be investigating the creation of links between the Hub, Copac and other data sources including DBPedia, data.gov.uk and the BBC, as well as links with OCLC for name authorities and with the Library of Congress for subject headings.This project will put archival and bibliographic data at the heart of the Linked Data Web, making new links between diverse content sources, enabling the free and flexible exploration of data and enabling researchers to make new connections between subjects, people, organisations and places to reveal more about our history and society.

Key deliverables: Output of structured Linked Data for the Archives Hub and Copac services. A prototype visualisation for browsing archives by subject, time and location. Opportunities and barriers reporting via the project blog.